The Best Science Fiction of the Year

From Hugo Award-Winning Editor Neil Clarke, the Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year Collected in a Single Hardcover Volume

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more—a task that can be accomplished by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to present the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, a yearly anthology compiled by Hugo and World Fantasy Award–winning editor Neil Clarke, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Clarke, publisher and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed and award-winning magazine Clarkesworld, has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year’s writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome “sensawunda” that the genre has to offer.

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld and Forever Magazine and owner of Wyrm Publishing, and a six-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

PRAISE FOR ANTHOLOGIES FROM NEIL CLARKE AND NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

“Readers should savor the stories a few at a time to get the most out of Clarke’s superior selections . . . but there are no inferior pieces here. This is a fine, thoughtful book.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review for Not One of Us
 
“Well-known SF authors grace this . . . top-notch selection of imaginative and thought-provoking stories.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review for More Human Than Human
 
“Clarke’s stellar reprint anthology explores the expansive variety of space exploration stories. . . . Outstanding works in which extreme environments bring out the best and worst of human nature.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review for The Final Frontier
 
 “Masterful editor Neil Clarke has assembled an exotic, bountiful treasure chest of reprint tales dedicated to that mode of SF that can arguably be said to constitute the very core of the field, the space opera.”
—Asimov’s on Galactic Empires
 
“Over all this anthology is mostly hits, remarkably few misses. Highly recommended.”
—New York Times on Galactic Empires